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Not just a barber

The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
Written: Coen Brothers; Direction:Joel Coen

 Another quirky movie from the Coen brothers, only, this time, it in black and white. The trademark is their story is written all over. It is a story set in the late 1940s of a small town barber who is a loser, who does not say much but does all his talking in soliloquy. He is so withdrawn and is living in his world, still trying to make out the meaning of life right till the end of the movie. (Spoiler Alert!) At the end of the film, as he sits in the electric chair, he hopes that his uncertainties would all be answered in the afterlife, he hopes, if there is one!

Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), the chain-smoking barber, like he says, “is just a barber” who works as an assistant to his brother-in-law. His wife, Doris, is a book-keeper who has an illicit affair with her boss. A mysterious customer hoodwinks the gullible Ed into investing $10,000 in a dry cleaning business venture. To procure the cash, he blackmails Doris’ boss (Ed knows about the affair) and successfully signs the deal.

The boss, after a showdown with Ed, is fatally wounded. Somehow, Doris is implicated when she is accused of cooking up the books for the boss to pay the ransom. Now, Ed has to hire an expensive attorney, with the help of his brother-in-law, to defend Doris. Just as the trial dates get near, Doris commits suicide!

Life goes on. Ed runs the barber shop as his brother-in-law buries his sorrows in the bottle. Ed’s life gets complicated when he gets involved in an accident and is accused of killing the earlier conman (of the dry cleaning business)! I guess poetic justice was served.

Memorable quote:

 The final soliloquy (as he is strapped on the electric chair) 
I don't know where I'm being taken. I don't know what waits for me beyond the earth and sky. Maybe the things I don't understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away. Maybe Doris will be there, and maybe there I can tell her all those things they don't have words for here.
The lawyer, creating the element of doubt,
The more you look, the less you really know.
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